Re: Punctuation

[John Cowan <jcowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxxx]

la kinin wrote:

> Does the placement or repetition of a denpa bu between words affect their
> meaning or grammaticality? (Is "lojban. .e" identical to "lojban. e" and
> "lojban... .. .. e"?)

They all mean just the same.

> Could stress be optionally marked by accents "á", "é", "í", "ó", "ú" (which
> are wholeheartedly ASCII and are supported in plain text) instead of
> capitalization?

Well, not technically ASCII. Latin-1, yes. It won't be part of the standard
orthography, but there's nothing preventing you from doing it.

In addition, capitalizing just the vowel is really enough, which reduces
learning burden. However, case is such a fundamental part of the Latin alphabet
that unless you want to learn Lojban and nothing but (improbable) you will
end up learning both case forms.

> Could certain symbols "stand for" (and be grammatically equivalent to)
> commonly used cmavo ("!" for ".ui", ":-)" for "zo'o", ">:(" for ".oi" and
> "«", "»" for "lu", "li'u" (I believe I've seen this one already used.))?
> They would be read the same way and would be only to simplify (and colorize)
> writing.

Yes. We sort of prefer to add the mark to the word, which means for example
that "!" can mark any attitudinal, thus "!ui !uo".

-- 

John Cowan	http://www.reutershealth.com	jcowan@reutershealth.com
Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! / Schliess eurer Aug vor heiliger Schau
Den er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.
-- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)